Month: March 2016

Thanks Google!

There is this awesome new feature for Android apps to use what is called Custom Tabs. What this feature does is allows your Android app to open external content inside Goolge Chrome and not in the traiditonal webview. You can set the color of the toolbar, the enter/exit animations, icons, and menu options. It’s a really nice addition to Android apps when you have links to external content, it keeps the user experience very smooth. There is an advanced usage where you can actually pre load in the background, which Google claims can save 700ms of loading time so it might be worth it for apps using webviews a lot.

The Story…

I’ve seen a few comments on various channels about how to change the status bar, navigation bar, and full screen layouts on Android in a NativeScript app. In this post I want to cover a few scenarios and how to achieve the specific layout you want in your app. So lets get started.